Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  He stepped around the corner. “Freeze. Hands where I can see ’em.”

  They did not freeze. Instead, they looked at each other, the kid giving the Oni a little nod, and they both rushed him. Kazue ducked the Oni’s punch, but the kid managed to hit him in the shin, sending him to the ground. He shoved his sasumata at the kid’s leg, catching it and sweeping it out from under him.

  He scrambled to his feet, avoiding another punch that skimmed his ear, and aimed his own punch to the Oni’s neck. It connected, but did not have the desired effect. Instead of spluttering for air, the demon only growled and punched him very hard in the chest.

  It knocked the air out of him, but he swung the flat end of Shinrinyoku as hard as he could at the Oni’s face. It didn’t knock him down, so he did it again and again. The fourth hit finally sent him to the ground.

  Kazue didn’t particularly like using his active ability. It required a lot of power that he didn’t usually have to use, especially when neither thing was made of metal. Unfortunately, the Oni was just going to get back up again if he didn’t use it, so he didn’t exactly have a choice. He let the power well up in him, focused on both the yokai and the floor he was on, and magnetized the two together.

  In any other circumstances, it would have been comical to watch the massive demon struggle to get off the ground, but he still had other fish to fry. Magic moved and he heard the crackle of electricity behind him. Kazue turned to see the kid, having stood up from his little tumble, with thin bolts of lightning dancing in between his fingers.

  Kazue silently cursed. He didn’t have enough power to use his active a second time, and the kid was wielding electricity when his weapon was a long metal pole. Kazue had a dispersion charm, but that would only do so much. Suddenly, gravity shifted and forced the kid to his knees, and the power he had been gathering dissipated.

  Several men in business suits rushed in, handcuffing both the Oni and the kid, arresting them for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Touma Kobayashi. The Oni stayed mostly silent throughout the ordeal, grunting when the MSA agents tried to ask him any questions. The kid, however, was pissed, and they had to drag him kicking and screaming out to the inconspicuous squad car outside.

  The ambulance arrived almost immediately after the others drove off. Paramedics made Kazue wait outside and out of the way; he watched them load Touma’s stretcher into the back. One paramedic stopped to ask him if Touma had any family or friends they needed to call.

  He only smiled and gave them Tsuyu’s number.

  ✧ ✧ ✧

  “Alright, thank you for your time.”

  Kazue sighed as he hung up the phone. He called the realtor of the house where Touma was found, but the only thing he had learned was why nobody wanted to buy the house. Basically, it was the first home of a newlywed couple that ended in tragedy. The wife was killed in a drunk driving accident and the husband died soon after of a mysterious illness.

  While the easy thing to do would be to blame it on the two troublemakers, something nagged at the detective. It just didn’t seem to fit, and if he had learned one thing in all his years of being a private investigator, it was to trust his instincts. So there he was, still working a closed case with nothing but a gut feeling and a bottle of whiskey.

  A knock at the door broke him out of his thoughts. This time, he had made sure that the sign was off, so whoever it was knew what they were doing. He got up to answer the door, curious and more than a little annoyed at whoever was calling at this hour. He hadn’t planned on going to sleep any time soon, so he wasn’t really out anything, but he still wanted to work on the case.

  He opened the door to find Tsuyu, dressed in a fur coat and wearing a demure expression.

  “You already paid me my fee.”

  “Yes, but I wanted to thank you personally, Hikubo-sama.” She entered and headed straight for the bathroom. “Allow me to change into something more comfortable.”

  He looked at all the old pictures on his desk, memories of a happier time long since passed. Photographs of his family before they had gone their separate ways.

  A small ringing of his cellphone broke the silence. Part of him wanted to just put it on silent and throw it somewhere it couldn’t bother him, like he had done with a lot of things in his life, but he did check the caller ID first. Probably a good thing he did, considering it was a call from the hospital. With more than a little reluctance, he hit the answer button.

  “Detective Kazue Hikubo, Hikubo Psychic Investigations. How can I help you?”

  The woman on the other end was clearly tired and obviously didn’t want to be there, false politeness lacing her tone. “Hi, I’m from the Tokyo Medical University Hospital, calling about Mister Touma Kobayashi. There’s been a problem with the emergency contact you provided, the one for Miss Tsuyu Kobayashi.”

  That was weird. He was sure that he gave them the right number. Kazue tried to not let the confusion edge into his voice. “What’s the problem with it?”

  “When we checked the records, it turns out that Mr. Kobayashi doesn’t have any sister listed.”

  This information was decidedly not good. Kazue was quiet, thinking up a lie that wouldn’t raise too much suspicion. “Ah, yes, well, I must have made a mistake somewhere. Tell you what, I’ll find the number of the girl and call you back.”

  He then quickly hung up with no intention of calling the hospital back. Hopefully, they wouldn’t care enough to follow up, and if they did, he could come up with a different lie that would keep them off his back for good.

  Kazue ran through all the information in his head again. Tsuyu Kobayashi had come in with a kidnapping story without involving the police or an actual private detective. The victim, Touma Kobayashi, was a faceless businessman who had an interest in the occult and had been frequenting a bar known to be a stomping ground for the paranormal. Then, while at said bar, a beautiful woman who looked exactly like a famous singer came in and flirted with the unremarkable man. Enough that she presumably got him to meet at a secondary location, presumed to be haunted by a newlywed couple, where she left him for dead. Kazue had gotten there in time to save him, which surprised Tsuyu, who seemed insistent that he was alive. Now he gets a call saying that, according to the paper trail, Tsuyu didn’t exist. Tsuyu, who looked almost exactly Shiori, despite her being a yokai. Tsuyu, who looked exactly like his former lover. Tsuyu, who was currently in his office trying to seduce him. And that’s when it all clicked.

  Exactly one phrase seemed to fit this situation perfectly. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

  He rushed to the door to get his weapon, only the door slid open before he even had a chance to reach the handle. Faster than he could react, the forked end of Shinrinyoku hit him in the chest, knocking him back into his desk, sending both himself and the stack of half-finished charms onto the floor. The next strike pinned the detective to the floor by his neck. There was just enough space between the metal and skin that he could breathe, but only just barely.

  Tsuyu crouched down next to him, a smile that was just a little bit too wide on her face. “You remind me so much of my husband. Always so excited about the paranormal. It’s cute, watching guys like you talk about the impossible and then watching your faces when you realize that you’re way in over your head.”

  Kazue stayed silent, eyes scanning the room, looking for anything that could help him. There had to be a way out of this. He just needed to figure out what it was. His eyes rested on the paper charms just within reach. They were minor protective charms, but a little shift in energy would be able to charge one enough to actually hurt her. Now all he had to do was to distract her.

  “How many? How many have you killed like this?” If breathing was hard, then talking was even harder.

  Tsuyu’s grin widened. “Oh, I’ve lost track. It got hard to keep track after—”

  Kazue didn’t wait for her to finish. In one fluid motion, he reached for the charm, charged it with as much power as he could muster, and smack
ed the woman. A horrible screeching filled the room as Tsuyu’s glamour faded. Bits of skin began to slough off, leaving a bleached grinning skull: the true visage of a Hone-onna.

  He began to pull on the pole that still pinned him to the ground. The spikes dug into his hands but it wouldn’t be anything that couldn’t heal with time. After a lot of pain and quite a bit of wiggling, he managed to force the sasumata out of the floorboards.

  As much as he wanted to just lie there on the ground and catch his breath, he still had a demon serial killer in the room with him. With more than a little struggle, he rose to his feet and tried to maneuver Shinrinyoku into a proper fighting position. By the time he managed that, Tsuyu had mostly gotten over her freakout, and now she looked pissed.

  She lunged for him, hatred in her eyes, and scratched his arm enough to draw blood. Kazue briefly mourned the loss of one of his good shirts before aiming for the demoness’s neck. He believed in karma that way. She dodged, but a quick adjustment allowed him to hit her right shoulder. All he needed to do was to keep her away long enough to send her back to Hell.

  The words for the banishment clumsily tumbled out of his mouth, years of misuse finally catching up with him. Tsuyu twisted her body out of his hold, and she began to rush him again, long, bony fingers poised to scratch and cut. Before she got nearly close enough to him, however, a small blue flame caught on her fingertip. It quickly spread across her hand and then her arm, consuming her whole body in the blink of an eye.

  Soon, the only evidence of her presence was two large gashes in the floor and the rest of the mess around the office. Banishment was by no means a permanent solution, not like the way a proper exorcism was, but it would keep her from hurting people for a long time.

  Kazue Hikubo looked around the complete mess that was his office and sighed. He was going to have to make a few phone calls.

  Sweet Seduction

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  I huddled over my coffee like it was the last sure thing on earth. It wasn’t, but since I hadn’t been to sleep in almost twenty-four hours, the warm, rich scent seemed more real than the people sitting on the other side of the desk. Or maybe I just liked the coffee better than the two tall, fashionable women sitting across from me. I admit that part of my crankiness was they hit a lot of my issues. They were both nearly six feet tall, vaguely Nordic, and blond: three things I would never be. I was built like my mother, who had been Mexican, as in first generation born in America. The only hint that my father looked more like the two women than me was my skin, which was so pale it really was almost white. I was actually paler than the women. The younger one had a light gold tan, and I couldn’t tan at all. I’d inherited my father’s Germanic skin, but my curves, my long curly black hair and the deep brown of my eyes were all my mother’s. I was also five foot three, a couple of inches taller than my mother, but that wasn’t the Mexican heritage, that was just because my mom’s family was short. The two women reminded me of my stepmother Judith, who my dad had married after my mom died. Judith had never let me forget that I wasn’t like the rest of the family. I was over thirty now and still hated her for it and resented my dad for not protecting me from it.

  “Miss Blake, are you listening to me? I told you my grandson is in mortal danger from this money-grubbing hussy.”

  I hadn’t heard the word hussy in maybe a decade and that was from my grandmother, but then Mrs. Chadwick was over seventy, though thanks to fabulous makeup and what I suspected was even more fabulous cosmetic surgery, she certainly didn’t look it.

  I raised my gaze from my coffee cup to Mrs. Robert Chadwick who sat nearly painfully upright in the client chair. It was a comfortable chair, but she sat in it with some of the most upright posture I’d seen in a long time. Her knees were together, her ankles crossed and to the side. It was a very ladylike posture; my Grandmother Blake would have been proud. In a dress, the knees together made sense, but the ankle crossing had always puzzled me.

  Her perfect posture made me fight not to hunch even further over my coffee, but I could only bend so far before the gun and extra ammo that were hidden under my black suit jacket dug into my side, so it wasn’t worth it.

  “It’s Ms. Blake or Marshal Blake, and yes, I heard you the first three times you said something similar. I also told you that you seem to have mistaken my job description. I am not a private detective. I am a U.S. Marshal with the Preternatural Branch, and I raise the dead here at Animators Inc., if you have a good enough reason for me to do it. Since you don’t have a rogue vampire or shapeshifter or other preternatural citizen making your life difficult, me being a marshal doesn’t help you, and if you don’t need a zombie raised, well, I’m not sure how I can help you.”

  “I paid a great deal of money to your business manager, Mr. Vaughn, to be assured that you would be able to help me, Miss Blake.”

  “Mr. Vaughn can get overly optimistic about my abilities when it comes to nonrefundable retainers over a certain size.”

  Part of my growing impatience was that she kept repeating herself and not listening to me, but I knew part of my crankiness was more about my own childhood issues than about the women in front of me, and because I knew that, I tried to be a grownup about it. I tried not to feel short and dark, or not to be bothered that they both looked like they were dressed for a semiformal event from perfect makeup to styled hair and I so wasn’t, but they weren’t making it easy.

  “I don’t approve of women calling themselves Ms.; you are a Miss until you marry and then you’re a Mrs., all the rest is nonsense.”

  I sipped my coffee and tried to think of any reply that wouldn’t piss her off and then realized I really didn’t care. The retainer was nonrefundable, and it had been large enough to get Bert Vaughn so excited he’d called me while I was off doing my duty as a U.S. Marshal. He knew better than to interrupt me when I was Marshal Anita Blake, as opposed to just Anita Blake, animator, so I’d taken his call. The amount of money he mentioned had been a lot of people’s salary for a year. It had been enough for my fellow animators to ask me to take the meeting. We worked more like a law firm now, with money being shared out, though the person who brought in the money got a higher percentage, still it was enough that it would help us all out. It was enough to make me go straight to the office instead of going home, cleaning up, and going to bed. The short, curvy, and ethnic I couldn’t do anything about, but under normal circumstances I’d have been in a nice business skirt outfit and makeup. I’d stripped off my body armor and most of my weapons, shoved them in the duffel at my feet until I had time to take them home and put them in the gun safe. That had left me in tactical pants, 5.11 boots, and a T-shirt that I’d worn under all of it, so nothing chafed. The T-shirt had a penguin wearing sunglasses on it with the slogan, “Whiskey and Bad Decisions.” I didn’t like whiskey, but I really liked penguins. I’d thrown the spare suit jacket I kept at the office over the T-shirt to hide the gun and ammo on my belt, but that had been the only concession I’d had time to make, because Mrs. Chadwick had insisted it had to be tonight and before a certain time. Like I said, she’d upped her ante until it was a year’s salary for a lot of people. But it hadn’t been my year’s salary.

  “And I don’t understand women introducing themselves as Mrs. Anything, as if they have no first name of their own and no identity outside of marriage.”

  The granddaughter gave a soft laugh that she quickly tried to turn into a cough. Either it fooled Mrs. Chadwick, or she ignored it. I was betting Mrs. Chadwick was good at ignoring things that didn’t meet with her approval. Too bad she couldn’t ignore me, or I couldn’t ignore her.

  “Are you trying to insult me, Miss…Ms. Blake?”

  “If you don’t pick on me, I won’t pick on you.”

  “This is not recess and we are not children.”

  “No, we are not,” I said, and took another sip of coffee. I had offered them refreshments, but she had refused, and the granddaughter had only wanted water. Them both turning down co
ffee was reason to dislike them a little. Nothing they had done had really won them the points back.

  “You do understand that my grandson, William, is in grave danger.”

  “I understand that you think he’s involved with the wrong woman and that she’s after his trust fund. I’m not sure that qualifies as grave danger, but I know a private detective that can follow them around and try to dig up dirt on the woman, but like I keep saying, I am not a private detective.”

  “We hired private detectives. They could prove nothing substantial.”

  I blinked at her, inhaled deeply of my coffee again, took another sip and tried not to start yelling. “Then why are you here, Mrs. Chadwick? Why did you pay a year’s salary to have this meeting?”

  She gave me a look down her perfect nose. “If it was your yearly salary, then your reputation must truly be exaggerated.”

  “Let me rephrase: you paid what amounts to a year’s salary for a lot of people. My reputation as a necromancer and as the nightmare of bad, little supernatural citizens everywhere is not exaggerated, so my pay grade is higher. Since you’re wearing a vintage Cartier watch and your granddaughter walked in here in Christian Louboutin stilettos, you might be out of my pay grade, but then again, you might not. But we’re not here to play who has the most money, we’re here because you told Mr. Vaughn it was a matter of life and death. You keep telling me your grandson is in grave peril, but the only danger seems to be that he’s about to marry a woman you don’t like? Is she not good enough for him? Too poor, too wild, too ethnic, too what, Mrs. Chadwick?”

  “Too fat,” she said.

  I set my coffee carefully on my desk, so I wouldn’t throw it across the room and lose my shit completely. “Get out of my office.”

  “My grandson was a fitness model for a brief time. He could have had the career I gave up, but he no longer wishes to model…”

  I stood up. “Get—out.”